Monday, 9 February 2015

Book Review ‘Act Like a Leader, Think Like a Leader – Reviewer Professor M.S. Rao

Acclaim
about the Book

“Herminia Ibarra has created a
valuable and successful model for helping forward-thinking professionals move
up the corporate ladder.” — Marshall Goldsmith, author of New York Times and
global best seller What Got You Here
Won’t Get You There

What
are the Details of the Book?

If you want to acquire practical knowledge
about leadership, read this book.If you
want to devise a plan of action to become a better leader, read this book. If
you want to grow your network to fast-track your career by acquiring latest
leadership tools and techniques, read this book. Herminia Ibarra’s authored
book Act Like a Leader, Think Like a
Leader is divided into five chapters and concludes with a message to act.

What
is Inside?

Herminia Ibarra gives very practical
advice on how managers and executives at all levels can step up to leadership
by making small but crucial changes in three areas as follows: redefine the
scope of your day job by plunging into new projects and activities; form
relationships and interact with people who see the world differently; and experiment
with unfamiliar and playful ways of connecting and engaging with others to get
things done.She shows that contrary to
popular opinion, experimentation, not self-reflection is the secret to
leadership development. Too much introspection shields us from discovering our
leadership potential and pigeonholes us as our past selves instead of pointing
the way to the self we can become. This type of inside out thinking can impede
change and hold back careers.

Herminia Ibarra outlines to invest in
activities that will grow your network as follows: use projects and assignments
strategically; invest in extracurricular activities; create your own
communities of interest; use lunches and business trips to connect to people
you don’t see often; favor active rather than passive networking opportunities
(for example, don’t just how up for events-organize, or speak at them); and use
social media to broadcast your interests and cast a wider net to people who
share them.

Operational,
Personal and Strategic Network

Three different networks-operational,
personal, and strategic-can play a vital role in helping you step up to lead.
The first helps you manage current internal responsibilities, the second boosts
personal development, and the third focuses on new business directions and the
stakeholders you must get on board to pursue these directions. While people
differ a lot in how well they build and use operational and personal networks,
author discovered that nearly everyone underutilizes strategic networking. Most
of the people the author comes across have good operational networks. These
networks include the people on whom you depend in order to get your work done.
The people include your direct reports, your superiors, people in other units,
and key outsiders such as suppliers, distributors, and customers.Personal networks include relationships with
the people that you feel closest to-friends, family, and trusted advisers-and
the people you meet through things like professional associations, alumni
groups, clubs, hobbies, charities, and other personal-interest communities. The
third kind of network-your strategic network-is made up of relationships that
help you to envision the future, sell your ideas, and get the information and
resources you need to exploit these ideas. It requires both time and attention
outside operational demands and strategic investment in outside activities that
can give you outsight on what else you might be doing.

A strategic network has to include
people and groups that can help you compete in the future. Part of the trick is
that it is not always so obvious who should be a part of this network. A good
strategic network gives you connective advantage: the ability to marshal
information, support, or other resources from one of your networks to obtain
results in another. It’s not so much about the one-on-one relationships you have,
but it is more about how they intersect.

Leadership
Takeaways

To step up to leadership, you
have to learn to think like a leader.

The way you think is a product of
your past experience.

The only way to change how you
think, therefore, is to do different things.

Doing things-rather than simply
thinking about them-will increase your outsight on what leadership is all
about.

Outsight comes from a “tripod” of
sources: new ways of doing your work (your job), new relationships (your
network), and new ways of connecting to and engaging people (yourself).

Sustainable change in your
leadership capacity requires shifts on all three legs of the tripod.

Success creates competency traps.
We fall into a competency trap when these three things occur: you enjoy what
you do well, so you do more of it and get yet better at it; when you
allocate more time to what you do best, you devote less time to learning
other things that are also important; and over time, it gets more costly
to invest in learning to do new things.

To act like a leader, you must
devote time to four tasks you won’t learn to do if you are in a competency
trap: bridging across diverse people and groups, envisioning new
possibilities; engaging people in the change process; and embodying the
change.

It’s hard to learn these things
directly and especially without the benefit of a new assignment. So, no
matter what your current situation is, there are five things you can do to
begin to make your job a platform for expanding your leadership: develop
your situation sensors; get involved in projects outside your area;
participate in extracurricular activities; communicate your personal “why”
and create slack in your schedule.

As you embark on the transition
to leadership, networking outside your organization, team, and close
connections becomes a vital lifeline to who and what you might become.

The only way to realize that
networking is one of the most important requirements of a leadership role
is to act.

If you leave things to chance and
natural chemistry, then your network will be narcissistic and lazy.

You need operational, personal,
and strategic networks to get things done, to develop personally and
professionally, and to step up to leadership. Although most good managers
have good operational networks, their personal networks are disconnected
from their leadership work, and their strategic networks are nonexistent
or underutilized.

Network advantage is a function
of your BCDs: the breadth of your contacts, the connectivity of your
networks, and your network’s dynamism.

Enhance or rebuild your strategic
network from the periphery of your current network outward as a first step
toward increasing your outsight on your self: seek outside expertise and
elicit input and perspectives of peers from different functional or
support groups.

Many of the typical challenges of
stepping up to leadership make people feel like fakes: taking charge in a
new role, selling their ideas, managing their higher-ups, working in an
alien culture, and learning from negative feedback.

Chameleons are comfortable
shifting shapes and styles to fit each new situation; true-to-selfers, on
the other hand, tend to feel inauthentic when asked to stretch outside
their comfort zone.

Authenticity traps really get you
into trouble when you are stepping up to leadership, because what feels
like the authentic you is the old self that you are trying to shed.

One way to escape the
authenticity trap is to think about experimenting with new behaviors as
playing around with your sense of who you are instead of working on it.
The new behaviors might feel unnatural in the beginning, but they help you
figure out who you might want to be, without your actually committing to
become it-playing gives you outsight on yourself.

Identity-who you are-is not just
about the past; it’s also the possibilities you envision for yourself in
the future.

Here are the three ways you can
play around with your sense of who you are: - steal like an artist;
observe a broad range of role models to create your own collage of things
you want to learn from these models, and keep refining your style until it
is effective and authentic; aim to learn: set learning goals, not just
performance goals; and don’t stick to your story; try different versions,
narrate different defining moments, and keep editing, much as you would
your curriculum vitae.

Stepping to play a bigger
leadership role is not an event; it’s a process that takes time before it
pays off. It is a transition built from small changes.

Most methods for changing ask you
to begin with the end in mind-the desired outcome. But in reality, knowing
what kind of leader you want to become comes last, not first, in the
stepping-up process.

The transition process is rarely
linear; difficulties and complications will inevitably arise and often
follow a predictable sequence of five stages: disconfirmation; simple
addition; complication; course correction; and internalization.

Making major, external moves like
changing jobs and careers, however, does not necessarily take you to a
better place. More important is to grow by questioning where you are
today. Actively entertaining alternatives, and eventually committing to
making changes. The changes can be external, like job moves, or more
internal, like changing the way you think about what you do and why.

Breaking free from your “ought
self” – what important people in your life think and ought to be-is at the
heart of the transition process.

What
is the Recommendation?

Herminia Ibarra is an exceptional
leadership scholar and intellectual. She authored this book based on her 25
years of teaching experience that includes executive education. She also
covered this book from psychology perspective. This book reveals her keen
interest in psychology as she referred lots of research works by renowned
psychologists in the world. She shares several
inspiring stories including Margaret Thatcher and Sheryl Sandberg. This book
reflects honest account of her perspective on leadership.It outlines summary at the end of each
chapter and offers self-assessment exercises, case studies, quotes and diagrams.

This is one of the finest books I have
read in my lifetime. I took lots of notes and created new triggers for my
research on leadership and organizational behavior. It is an inspiring and thought
provoking book to grow as a great leader.It is a well researched with both scholarly and practitioner
application. It is an insightful and inspiring book worth investing your time. It
is useful for educators, scholars, learners, leaders and CEOs. A must read for
professionals to grow as great leaders.You
can gift this book to others. Enjoy reading this book!

“This intelligent and
thought-provoking book is for those who really want to make a difference—those
willing to act their way into leadership situations they might previously have
thought themselves out of.” — Paul Polman, CEO, Unilever

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About Me

Professor M.S.Rao, Ph.D. is the Father of ‘Soft Leadership’ and Founder of MSR Leadership Consultants, India. He is an International Leadership Guru and an internationally acclaimed leadership educator, executive coach, speaker, and consultant. He is a sought-after keynote speaker globally. He has 36 years of experience, and the author of 36 books including the award-winning ‘21 Success Sutras for CEOs’ URL: http://www.amazon.com/21-Success-Sutras-Ceos-Rao/dp/162865290X. His award-winning book 21 Success Sutras for Leaders URL: http://www.amazon.com/21-Success-Sutras-Leaders-ebook/dp/B00AK98ELI was ranked as one of the Top 10 Leadership Books of the Year – 2013 by San Diego University, USA URL: http://www.sandiego.edu/soles/departments/leadership-studies/thought-leadership/book-award.php. His award-winning book Success Tools for CEO Coaches: Be a Learner, Leader, and Ladder http://www.amazon.in/SUCCESS-COAHES-LEARNER-LEADER-LADDER/dp/9351102491 is the Community Award Winner for 2014 by Small Business Trends, USA. He is passionate about serving and making a difference in the lives of others. His vision is to build one million students as global leaders by 2030